


Products of Design

by Runlights



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Brainwashing, Daddy Issues, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runlights/pseuds/Runlights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19994.html?thread=47808282#t47808282">Avengerskink</a> Prompt:</p><p>The Winter Soldier had a son during his time in captivity with HYDRA. That son was named Brock Rumlow. They were both prisoners to the organization that they served in; only one of them knew it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Products of Design

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the following prompt:
> 
>  
> 
> _  
> [GEN] Rumlow is Bucky's ~~(grand)~~ son  
> _
> 
>  
> 
> _That's it, that's the prompt. Take it however and wherever you want, I am 100% open to anything. The idea just popped into my head the other day and now it won't leave._
> 
>  
> 
> _Did Bucky Barnes knock up a girl in the 30s/40s? Did Hydra/the Red Room give him a woman (or give him TO a woman) at some point? Is Natasha the mother? Does Rumlow know or not? And if so, does he care? Does BUCKY know at any point? TELL MEEEEEEE a story, Anons! *chin hands* :D_

***

The Winter Soldier slowly lifted his head from its resting place when the door to his confinement opened, the general noiselessness disturbed by a sudden squawking sound. He stared dispassionately at the female technician who was ushered in holding a bundle of white rags, followed by two others men, an older and a younger one. He lost interest almost immediately and settled back into his black throne and listened to the gentle scratch of a nib on paper.

The older man next to him responsible for his deceleration in preparation for cryofreeze added another medication to the intravenous port that hung mid air next to his right hand. His eyes half-closed as the drug cocktail reached his bloodstream and began to slow his heart and breathing rate. His muscles began to relax with and without his express permission.

Yet, his eyes opened when there sounded another pitiful squawk followed by the more determined cries of an unhappy newborn. His eyes returned to the three people who lingered by the door before dropping to the squirming bundle before the eldest man, the Major General he recalled, pushed the female technician forward.

“Go on, he’s docile,” the Major General said softly yet with great confidence. “Alex, watch closely now,” the older man with a thick Russian accent added to third occupant.

The Soldier’s eyes tracked the young woman’s nervous progress forward to him, flicking his gaze to her arms (which held the crying bundle) to her throat to her knees. She was not a threat, moving slowly and trembling slightly before reaching out as if to offer him the rags. He made no move to take it and simply stared at her until her trembling almost became violent.

“Soldier, take the baby,” the Major General ordered in Russian.

The technician who had been working next to his right arm paused and went very still. He knew that reaction well. Still, he reached out with restrained motions and took the bundle that was still putting up a fuss and making the room volume generally bothersome. For a moment, he just held the bundle as he had picked it up, not drawing the squirming mass of limbs towards himself.

His arms were heavy from drugs, and they slowly forced him to draw in the infant. His position in the angled back of the chair put him at an angle where leaning as heavily as he was gave him a good enough slope to dump the rags against his chest and abandon it there so his arms could return to the arm rests of the chair.

The infant, clearly newborn based on the redness of skin, continued to howl. He simply tuned it out, ignoring the little sensations of a small hand grasping at his chest from beyond the edge of the blankets. However, clearly aware of something warm and potentially life giving was near, the infant began to root around the blankets, a dark-haired little head emerging until eager lips and small nose and forehead rubbed on his bare chest. It was uncoordinated, and he only raised an arm because he hadn’t been ordered to let the infant fall. His flesh forearm settled on a diapered backside to support apparent progress.

He stared straight ahead, watching the three individuals who were looking right back with a curious patience. The infant had gone mostly quiet save for a soft grunting sounds, lips and forehead bumping and seeking higher and higher until the diapered infant had nestled into the crook of his neck still making soft almost hopeful grunting noises.

The older technician next to him didn’t move a muscle save to blink and breath. There was no more progress to press him into the relaxed half-aware state for cryofreeze. Aside from five pairs of adult lungs drawing and expelling air, there was nothing but the occasional frustrated grunt from his neck, little fingers bumping on his chest but nothing to clasp onto.

“It… doesn’t appear as if it will happen,” the young man, Alex, said softly.

The Major General still chuckled softly and then waved a hand at the female technician to go forward and collect the unhappy squirming newborn. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like the Soldier is a man. He’s incapable of bonding to anything. Just as we have worked so hard for.”

“Sir…”

“Never forget, Alex, the Soldier is a weapon. Use him as such,” the Major General said. That was the man’s ‘teaching’ voice. The Soldier knew it well enough.

The strawberry blond Alex frowned. “Then why do this at all? Why the infant, sir?”

“The serum, Alex. The serum,” was all the Major General said.

His blue eyes fixed on the young woman as she picked up the white blanket that was now empty and smoothed out the disarray of the material before reaching for the infant nestled into his neck. The baby was starting to cry again, but he once again tuned it out, letting her remove the warm dark-haired child without more than a simple slow blink.

The technician at his right began to administer more medication and the Soldier closed his eyes in response, letting his head settle back against the head rest. There was a lingering warmth and sensation where the baby had been squirming just a few moments before but soon enough even that heat dissipated.

Soon enough, there was only cold.

***

“How long do you plan on waiting here?”

James looked up from where he had been staring at the floor, the gentle chirp of hospital instruments the only music in the bleached white room. He regarded the tall blond man lingering in the doorway to the private room, the two posted guards just beyond it stoic and trying not to listen in on the conversation about to be had.

“They said they’d be reducing the sedatives today,” he murmured as a way of explanation. He slouched in the uncomfortable hospital chair and stared up at the ceiling. He heard the door close to announce that Steve had planned to stay with him. “If he woke up…”

“He doesn’t know, Buck,” Steve said carefully, closing the distance until he could feel the heat of Steve’s body on his right arm. “You can’t really mean to spring this on him either, not after the damage he’s suffered. Not after the _life_ he’s lived.” He shrugged. “You should think about it more…”

He frowned, tapping his metal forefinger against arm of the chair. The problem lately was that he had been thinking too much, bogged with details and unable to do something productive. This vigil was the first real productive thing he had done all week, and it seemed pointless to be here if he was going to walk away as soon as Steve urged him to.

“Why did you show me if you want me to think about it?”

Steve looked slightly sheepish but unrepentant. “I thought he was dead and when he wasn’t dead, he was dying, and I thought it would ease your mind to know you weren’t completely alone back then.”

James sighed heavily, lifting his right hand and passing it down his freshly shaved cheeks. “Obviously he’s not dead or dying.”

“That still doesn’t mean you should tell him as soon as he wakes up,” Steve argued softly, had clearly been forming these arguments since he had arrived with a set purpose three hours ago. “He’s going to be confused enough.”

“Stop, Steve,” he said firmly, cutting off his friend with a hand gesture. “It’s my decision, and I’ve made it. Leave off or go home.”

It wasn’t the first decision he had made on his own, that one still being the choice to drop into the Potomac and save Steve’s life. The second was walking away and the third was returning to accept the help to rehabilitate gradually again, to heal after the damage that he had suffered for so long. This might have been the forty-fifth decision he had made, but he stopped keeping count in his head. He was writing them down now.

Steve, ever the faithful friend, stayed and took up a vigil by the window and stared out of it. They entered a companionable silence. He alternated between staring at the white ceiling or the white floors, ignoring the hospital bed completely because it currently had no interest to him. Soon, he told himself, though he hadn’t yet puzzled out the feelings that were tangled together for this.

They waited in almost complete silence through nurse visits and assurances for hours and it must have been close to midnight before a soft grunt sounded from the hospital bed. It was nothing like the tiny hopeful grunting against his chest and neck that was a shadow across his still recovering mind, nothing of an infant purposefully lost and then objectively found at the right time to be most the most useful. Just like the Soldier himself when he had disappeared from a mission to go to Brooklyn.

He pushed himself out of his chair and padded silently to the edge of the bed where a man lay bandaged heavily with tubes jammed up nostrils, one for providing oxygen and another to drain fluids attempt to fill lungs in the other. Dark eyes stared almost unseeing in the room, but gradual awareness returned and he saw the moment of squinted recognition.

Steve shifted near the window but didn’t come closer, respecting his privacy in this. Perhaps even guarding it.

“…So…ld..ier…” The voice that managed to whisper the syllables was not strong, barely audible. It barely made sense over the sound of the machines.

“Rumlow,” he softly murmured in reply. He waited in silence, stared as if trying to see beyond the heavy bandaging and the few exposed centimeters of blistered charred skin. “When you heal – and you will – you will reveal the knowledge that you have of HYDRA, its operations, and its personnel.”

Brock Rumlow stared at him, the place where eyebrows should be twitching as the words filtered through that drug-riddled mind. He could see the refusal building and aware that right now, the HYDRA agent was not strong enough to form the words to refuse him. There wasn’t even enough breath for a swear word for him. He would have been unmoved by it anyway.

“If you perform as I tell you to, you will be temporarily released into Steve Rogers’ custody until permanent arrangements can be made,” he went on, his hands finally rising to settle on the bed guard rails.

Rumlow said nothing but stared at him with rising consciousness, the man obviously fighting to stay focused on his face and words. He leaned over the bed, and his expression softened at the dismissive grunt that sounded from the man on the bed. Instead, he received what he thought might be the current equivalent of a glower.

It was good enough, and he pushed away from the bed before he rustled in his jacket pocket for the small black and white still capture photo. It had wrinkled edges, dog-eared on every corner and with big glaring time stamp in the bottom right hand corner. His fingers smoothed over the fuzzy faded image before he shifted to put it on the table next to Rumlow’s bedside.

“Bucky don’t,” Steve said softly from behind him. “Not yet.”

He stared at Rumlow for a long moment before he set the picture down on the table so that it was leaned on an empty vase. He shifted and turned, tucking his hands into his pockets and moving away from the bedside to leave. He felt Steve linger for a moment before giving into his choice on the matter. It was his right, one of the few that he had.

They were all products of the science that made them. Unlike Steve, some of those experimented on had no choice in the matter. They were simply products of the men who thought themselves gods.

***

The hospital hadn’t changed, not even the room itself. It was still very white, but the machines were turned off, the soft suction sound to drain lungs of fluid was gone and only the gentle sound of an IV pump working filled the silence. There was a single vase still, and it had two roses in it, both long dead and brown, wilted and dried to nothing. They had probably been poisonous.

James stepped into the room and was unmoved by the dark eyes that glared at him. He shut the door behind him and silently ghosted to the edge of the bed. The occupant of the bed wore only light bandages on the arms and chest, an intravenous catheter in the right hand, the silver metal ring of a hand cuff on the left. His eyes ran over the lightly scarred face, far better off than anyone else who had been nearly killed in that building collapse.

His hands were tucked almost casually in his pockets. It had been months since he had been in this room, less so for Steve who had complained about the stubborn pig-headed man that had grudgingly giving up information on the last known activities of HYDRA. It had come with Rumlow’s usual arrogant now fully expected verbal nastiness and meant to drive another man from the room. Steve expected the information to be falsified. He did not.

He waited, still and silent next to the bedside. Rumlow waited, poised and glaring in the bed. If they shared any one trait, it was patience to outlast another.

He had more practice. Rumlow would have contested it, he knew. Truth did nothing to assuage the bitterness of a man who had lost everything.

“The picture doesn’t mean anything,” Rumlow finally said. The man produced the picture, now looking more worn and faded around the edges. “It certainly doesn’t change anything.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed simply. “We have our lives, and that’s more than most believe we should, Rumlow.”

“Shouldn’t that be _Barnes_ now?” It was said in a cutting voice meant to strike home some damage. It missed its mark completely.

They lapsed into another silence, but he was not particularly caring to break it. He noted that Rumlow’s thumb subtly caressed the photo absently, no doubt a habit picked up after long hours of boredom, bandage changes and skin grafts. Perhaps to him it was a telling gesture while everyone else would simply ignore it as a textile response. They had said Rumlow would never get full sensation back to finger tips and toes and even large aspects of the man’s back where too much skin nerve damage had occurred.

It seemed to him that the HYDRA agent could feel just fine on the thumb pad.

“I saw you,” James said softly into the silence. “Maybe a few hours after you were born…”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Rumlow replied and looked away, staring at a wall.

“You tried to suckle on me,” he continued, ignoring the twitch of shoulders nearby. “You were noisy and bothersome, but you were also very small.” The agent was trying to ignore him, but the subtle tilt of Rumlow’s head indicated the man was listening. “Your birth mother died after you were born.”

He lapsed into silence and waited, letting the information settle between them. He tucked his hands into his pockets again and stood still as stone. He stared at the wall, not even rousing himself when Rumlow shifted and lay back against the pillows, waiting and aware of the other man.

“Who was she?” Was that grudging bitter curiosity?

“A HYDRA medical officer,” he murmured softly. “She apparently volunteered.”

“So did you, I expect,” Rumlow replied maliciously. “You always did what you were told after all. An order was an order.”

“Yes,” he agreed without a hint of displeasure. It was the truth, and he had come to accept it as something that had been beyond his control. “We are all products of our makers and some of us never had the benefit of a choice.”

“Whatever, this doesn’t change anything.” He noted that the HYDRA agent held up the fuzzy photo, the only proof that they had met even briefly stamped in black and white. “I must be the only child in existence older than his own father.”

James had nothing to say to that. Instead, he reached into his coat pocket and dropped a small metal key down on the beige blanket, and he didn’t need to see to know that Rumlow’s hand closed on it immediately. He stepped away from the bed and padded to the door, glancing back to find the other man watching him with the usual cunning.

“If you want more information, you can come and find me for it,” he said simply. He left without a backwards glance.

Brock Rumlow disappeared from the hospital the following day.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for taking the time to read my work, and I always appreciate any kudos or comments left.


End file.
